The language of politics in seventeenth-century England
By: Conal Condren.
Series: Studies in modern history; Studies in modern history (St. Martin's Press)
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 215
Subjects: Political science -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.; Political science literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.; Rhetoric -- Political aspects -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.; Field theory (Linguistics)
Description: "This is a study of the words of political discourse in seventeenth-century England from which we now reconstruct its theories. Taking its starting-point in modern theories of language, intellectual history is first reconceptualised. Part 1 presents an overview of the political domain in the seventeenth century, arguing that what we see as the political was fugitive and subject to reductionist pressures from better-established fields of discourse. Further there were strong pressures leading towards an indiscriminate and relatively general vocabulary, in turn facilitating the imposition of our anachronistic images of political theory. Part 2 focuses on a sub-set of the political vocabulary, charting the changing relationships between the words subject, citizen, resistance and rebellion, the coinage of rhetorical exchange. The final chapter returns most explicitly to the themes of the introduction, by exploring how the historian's own vocabulary can be systematically misleading when taken into the context of seventeenth-century word use."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-206) and index.